Bogus Comp Time Bill Robs Working Families

June 3, 2003

Statement of NOW President Kim Gandy

There is nothing family-friendly about H.R. 1119. This bogus "comp time" bill eliminates overtime pay for all practical purposes and erodes important protections, including the 40-hour workweek and the minimum wage. Businesses and corporations will have a much easier time demanding long work hours, avoiding lawsuits for violating the law, and manipulating employees' schedules to fit the needs of the boss, regardless of how much it costs the worker in additional child care and transportation costs.

The Congressional effort to undermine fair labor laws and worker protections is part of a well-coordinated attempt by big-business Republican legislators, private sector corporate interests and the Bush administration's Department of Labor. Using sleight of hand tactics and "we care about working families" rhetoric, this triad's true intention is to increase profits for businesses and corporations at the expense of people in low-wage and hourly-wage jobs and their families.

The legislation to undermine overtime pay for deserving workers is up for a vote on the House floor this week, while across town the Department of Labor is spinning their regressive revision of labor law as a benevolent effort to include "more" workers in the "overtime" category. This is a magician's trick--setting up a million new workers to think they will be eligible for overtime--when in fact the mock comp time bill simultaneously pulls the rug out from under them. Now you see it, now you don't.

The bogus comp time bill spells disaster for low-income workers who will lose their protection against excessive work hours as well as their voice in deciding when to work extra hours and when to take the compensatory time they've earned. The bill does away with overtime pay for hourly-wage low-income workers and instead traps them in a system where they are granted IOUs from their employer for every hour worked more than the 40-hour per week maximum, replacing time-and-a-half wages with a promise that the employee will get paid time off sometime in the next 13 months--at the employers' discretion.

Overtime pay makes up about one-fourth of the average weekly earnings of workers who receive it, and they count on that income to meet basic family needs. Adding insult to injury, these employees will continue having to spend extra money now on child care and transportation in order to work unexpected overtime, but without the pay to meet those additional obligations.

If "family flexibility" is really the goal of the sponsors of H.R. 1119, the focus of the legislation should be enforcing and improving current labor law and not abandoning the protections of overtime pay and other hard-won workplace protections.

The National Organization for Women calls on truly "family-friendly" allies in Congress to oppose H.R. 1119 and expose this sham as a serious step backward in protecting the rights and economic security of hardworking families.

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